English

Adjective

otiose ‎(comparative more otiose, superlative most otiose)

1. Resulting in no effect.

   (Can we add an example for this sense?)

2. Reluctant to work or to exert oneself.

   (Can we add an example for this sense?)

3. Having no reason for being (raison d’être); having no point, reason, or purpose.
   • 1895, Robert Louis Stevenson, Vailima Letters, ch 3

     On Friday morning, I had to be at my house affairs before seven; and they kept me in Apia till past ten, disputing, and consulting about brick and stone and native and hydraulic lime, and cement and sand, and all sorts of otiose details about the chimney – just what I fled from in my father’s office twenty years ago;

   • 1969, G. R. Elton, The Practice of History:

     Neither the fact that the debates can become otiose, nor their zeal in so often simply echoing the points made in the past, need, however, lead one to suppose that the proper cure is silence.

Synonyms

• (resulting in no effect): futile, ineffective
• (reluctant to work): indolent, lazy, sluggish
• (having no reason or purpose): superfluous, irrelevant, pointless

Antonyms

• (resulting in no effect): productive, useful
• (reluctant to work): hardworking
• (having no reason or purpose): essential, necessary

Derived terms

• otiosely
• otioseness
• otiosity

Translations

Latin

Adjective

ōtiōse

1. vocative masculine singular of ōtiōsus

References

• otiose in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• otiose in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• Félix Gaffiot (1934), “otiose”, in Dictionnaire Illustré Latin-Français, Paris: Hachette.